Who was Pythagoras? (1512)

Who would have guessed that given a right angled triangle, you only need to know the lengths of two sides to figure out the length of the third? This relates directly to the Pythagorean Theorem. The theorem is named after the Greek mathematician Pythagoras who discovered it and it's proof.

a² + b² = c²

If a triangle contains a right angle (90 degrees), you are able to make a square on each of the three sides. The biggest square will be the exact same size as the two smaller squares put together. The following picture illustrates this fact.

Let's check if the areas are the same: 32 + 42 = 52 Calculating this becomes: 9 + 16 = 25 It works ... like Magic!



 

The two shortest sides of the right angled triangle are called the legs (a & b). The longest side is considered the hypotenuse (c). The square of the hypotenuse is is equal to the sum of the squares of the two legs. Math is simply amazing!